Femininity Friday: Feminism and Economic Equality

Good morning! Welcome to another Femininity Friday. This is the day of the week when we discuss issues specific to being a woman. Topics range from health and fitness to femininity and feminism. Lets jump in.

In case you missed it a while ago, we started a series about the differences between feminism and anti-feminism. You can read the introduction to the series here and the FIRST and SECOND posts exploring feminism. We are trying to establish which school of thought (if either of them) is right for a Bible-believing-Christian-woman. We will be breaking down the definition of the two camps of thought and tackling a part of that definition in each post.

This is the third post in which we are looking at the definition of feminism.

I have listed out and put a short explanation of the various types of feminism here. (Feel free to check them out. If I have missed any, please let me know!) If you Google the definition of a feminist the answer you get is, "a person who supports feminism". That is not super helpful. So then I looked up the definition of feminism which says, "the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality with men". This definition is echoed on Jezebel a very active feminist website (fair warning it has strong language).  

In the introduction to this series we covered the basics of why this topic matters at all. In the first real post we discussed political equality and in the second post we covered social equality. The third "ground' discussed is economic equality. That raises the question, what are the economic rights of men? If you check out the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative you will find that economic rights boils down to: 

• the right to education
• the right to access to food
• the right to health 
• the right to housing
• the right to social security
• the right to work.

Taking a look at that list, no one is saying women cannot have those things. Women are more likely than men to earn a college degree. 
There are plentiful services provided by our government to help women in poor financial circumstances with food and nutrition. 
Medicaid and Medicare are available to women that need health services. 
Women have the EXACT same access to social security that men do. 
And my favorite part... in 1920 (nearly 100 years ago) the Women's Bureau of Department of Labor was formed to make sure that there are equal opportunities for women in the workforce. 

This is usually the part where people start throwing around that whole "women only make 68 cents for every dollar a man earns" thing. Lets just talk about that one for a minute shall we? In 1963 the The Equal Pay Act was passed by Congress. This act dictates that women must be paid the same wage if they are doing the same work as men, period. If someone is violating that law it is a crime and should be reported and prosecuted. However, that whole wage gap thing is still promoted by feminists ALL THE TIME. If you don't believe me, check out the hashtag #WageGap on twitter. Go ahead, I'll wait.  

Ok, now that you're back and you have seen how many women believe that they are truley being taken advantage of economically, I want to share a video with you about the wage gap so you can see what exactly is being said here. The truth is this entire wage gap theory is a misrepresentation of fact! Originally I was going to write it all out, but I feel like they do a better job explaining it than I ever could. So with that being said, lets jump in and take a look. 

So there really isn't a gender wage gap at all. If you take this argument out of the running, that means that men and women have the exact same economic opportunities. Women are not being held back economically by men. They have complete access to the same economic opportunities.  

In the next installment of this series I will write up my final thoughts on feminism before I start looking at the anti-feminist movement. If you want to be sure that you don't miss one of my posts you can have The Forgiven Former Feminist delivered directly to your email here. 

While this is a bit more academic and a little less relational that the things I normally write, I still want to encourage constructive conversation about the topic. I would love to hear any suggestions, thoughts, or comments that y'all may have!  Want to know where I got my resources? Check out here, here, here, here, and here.